Public, private, and nonprofit organizations use balanced scorecards to map their strategy based on cause-and-effect assumptions, to align the entire organization behind that strategy, and to measure and improve strategic performance. They use balanced scorecards not just to manage for results, but to manage for strategic results that most advance their mission. A Community Balanced Scorecard can bring that power to an entire community by focusing on a state, regional, or community improvement strategy that involves multiple players such as citizens, government, nonprofits, and public-minded businesses. Balanced scorecards are about managing strategy; Community Balanced Scorecards combine the traditional approach with engagement of partners to enable faster, better progress toward desired community outcomes.
Our Community Balanced Scorecard (CBSC) methodology has adapted the balanced scorecard strategy map and added more tools to manage the complexity of collaborative efforts, communicate strategy to partners to help them find their roles, and help partners determine how to implement and measure their contributions toward the realization of the community’s vision.
Communities using the “Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships” (MAPP) framework for collaborative community health improvement have been finding that CBSC is a good fit for MAPP. Learn how CBSC is well matched with MAPP, and about opportunities to use CBSC tools with MAPP
Don’t have the resources to commit in advance to a full system? CBSC tools can be used in a step wise fashion, with benefits for your community at each step. Learn more (1-page PDF)
Project Highlights
- We developed the Community Balanced Scorecard framework used by Communities of Hope, a project in Metro Detroit aimed at breaking the cycle of poverty for residents of subsidized housing projects. CBSC strategies developed by Communities of Hope involve leveraging community assets to improve low-income families’ quality of life, such as cooperative food purchasing and delivery to help families living in “food deserts” obtain affordable, nutritious food.
- In the State of Delaware, the Division of Public Health (DPH) has adopted CBSC tools for strategic planning and performance management. We helped them use a “top level strategy map” to focus strategic planning and prepare for accreditation. We also helped DPH develop a strategy map for reducing obesity. DPH has been using related tools we provided to refine the strategy and build connections with their new performance management system. This project was done in partnership with the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the CDC.
- In another ASTHO-CDC projects, we are helping the New York State Office of Public Health use our CBSC tools for strategic planning and accreditation preparation.
- We have worked with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) MAPP Team, and the MAPP Work Group involving local health officials, CDC staff, and others from across the country, to use our CBSC tools, especially strategy maps, for strategic planning to improve MAPP from the national to local levels.
- Our local public health CBSC projects have involved communities in various states. We have helped community partnership teams develop strategy maps to reduce obesity, increase child wellness, eliminate preventable chronic disease, improve youth behavioral health outcomes, increase access to care, improve social supports, and address determinants of health. They have been using their strategy maps to build community support for change and to obtain implementation commitments by partners. For example:
- The Cheshire Medical Center Healthy Monadnock 2020 Team in Keene, Hew Hampshire, used the RTM Team to develop a “top level strategy map” for their healthy community initiative and facilitate the Council for a Healthier Community, a cross-sector leadership group, in determining the number and topics of community action planning groups. We then helpied the Healthy Monadnock Team work with the 5 action planning groups to develop strategy maps for healthy eating, active living, health education & awareness, determinants of health, and social networks to support health. Later, we helped Healthy Monadnock use the Community Results Compact tool to develop signed agreements with various business, nonprofit, and government organizations to each make specific measurable progress that contributes to achieving mutually desired community health outcomes.
- The Hunterdon Regional Community Health and Partnership for Health in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, used the RTM Team and Insightformation, Inc., to develop and manage several strategies for its MAPP community health planning and improvement program.
- In St. Clair County, Illinois, a MAPP community, the Health Department and Health Care Commission has been using the RTM Team and Insightformation, Inc., to develop and manage nutrition and fitness strategies for its Get Up & Go! campaign, which involves over 100 partners.
- In Osceola County, Florida, a MAPP community, the Health Department and Community Vision, Inc., used their strategy map to obtain the commitment of the Health Leadership Council, which includes the heads of major public, nonprofit, and charitable organizations (including hospitals and the county government), to convene a Community Health Summit to address access to care.
- Strategy mapping in Wood County, Ohio, led Bowling Green State University to train faculty and graduate assistants to recognize signs of potential mental health problems in students and refer them for screening and treatment before problems become severe. The strategy has also been used to start or increase suicide prevention programs in public schools and school districts in the county.
- In Montgomery County, Ohio, the Get Up Montgomery campaign for healthy lifestyles and obesity reduction has used both their strategy map and “Partner2Partner Handshakes,” their adaptation of the Community Results Compact tool we introduced, to develop stong commitments with over 50 partners and counting.
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- In Novosibirsk, Russia, we delivered a Train-the-Trainer seminar in Community Balanced Scorecard development for representatives of the Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Center’s Network from throughout Siberia.
- For the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), the largest nonprofit community development organization in the U.S., we provided Community Balanced Scorecard training to organization development staff from LISC affiliates from across the country. The training focused on how participants could apply CBSC tools to help their local programs transition to a new “Sustainable Communities” strategy.
View Free Recorded Webinar on CBSC
- Community Balanced Scorecards to Meet Public Health Challenges
- Slides for 2 webinars introducing CBSC concepts (no longer available for online viewing, but PDFs of slides available at link)
Read the FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions on Community Balanced Scorecards in Public & Community Health
Other Resources
- Briefing paper (PDF) on Community Balanced Scorecards in Public Health by Paul Epstein and Alina Simone.
- Our 2012 APHA conference presentation”CBSCs for Leading Collaborative Strategies to Achieve Community Health Outcomes“
- Our 2012 Community Indicators Consortium Presentation presentation “Community Balanced Scorecards for Collective Impact“
- Our 2011 APHA conference presentation: “Use CBSCs to Mesh Strategic Planning, Health Improvement Planning, and Accreditation“
- Community Health Strategy Management: Adding Value One Step at a Time (PDF) describes a step-by-step approach for implementing CBSC tools, enabling communities with limited resources to benefit from each step along the way without making a commitment in advance to building a complete system.
- Community Balanced Scorecards for MAPP Communities describes how CBSC is well matched with MAPP, with links to more resources, including “Quick Guides” relating CBSC and MAPP and a free NACCHO webinar on how CBSC tools make MAPP more effective.
- “Community Balanced Scorecards for Strategic Public Health Improvement” by Paul Epstein, Alina Simone, and Lyle Wray in The Public Health Quality Improvement Handbook of the Public Health Foundation and American Society for Quality
- The Community Indicators Consortium has archived for viewing (by CIC members) the March 2012 webinars by Paul Epstein on “Community Balanced Scorecards & Effective Community Governance” and by Lyle Wray on the “Community Results Toolkit: From Community Indicators to Results”
Selected Clients
- Association of State and Territorial Health Officials
- Bergen County Community Health Improvement Partnership (New Jersey)
- Communities of Hope (Detroit)
- Delaware Division of Public Health
- Local Initiatives Support Corporation
- Public Health—Dayton and Montgomery County (Ohio)
- Public Health Foundation
- National Association of County and City Health Officials
- New York State Department of Health
- Osceola County Health Department (Florida)
- Saint Clair County Health Department (Illinois)
- Siberian Civic Initiatives Support Corporation
- Summit County Health District (Ohio)
- Wood County Health Department (Ohio)